Work-at-home trend helping, but 180,000 without power in storm

By Colin A. YoungSTATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

Tuesday

Mar 13, 2018 at 3:29 PMMar 13, 2018 at 3:34 PM

Clad in a purple sweater, Gov. Charlie Baker and transportation officials said at midday Tuesday that there have been no major flooding or traffic problems associated with the nor'easter that has enveloped Massachusetts, but tens of thousands of residents are in cold homes without power and Baker cautioned that the storm is far from over.

"This storm is still getting -- I wouldn't call it still getting going, but there is still a lot of time left in this storm," Baker said from the Department of Transportation Highway Operations Center in South Boston. He said the heavy snow that fell in some areas Tuesday morning is expected to continue to "fall about one to three inches per hour for most of the rest of today, ending later this afternoon."

Just after the governor's press conference ended, the National Weather Service announced that the conditions in Boston had officially earned the blizzard designation. The NWS reported 6 inches of snow in Somerville, 6.5 inches in Framingham and 8.5 inches in Milford as of 11 a.m. Tuesday.

The governor said the latest update he had seen still called for widespread snow totals of 12 to 18 inches across eastern and central Massachusetts, and as much as 24 inches for parts of Cape Cod and southeastern Massachusetts. He said the snow is expected to become lighter through the afternoon as temperatures drop.

As of noon, there were about 175,000 homes or businesses without electricity across the state, Baker said, and that number is expected to rise as more customers lose power on Cape Cod, in Plymouth County and along the South Shore. By 12:20 p.m., the state reported another 5,000 customers had lost power.

"We are hearing, especially on the Cape and South Coast, that there are a lot of wires down," Baker said, cautioning people to stay away from power lines that could be live.

The power outages have been widespread over the last two weeks, which have now featured three nor'easters, forcing families to flee cold homes or try to keep their homes functional by connecting to generators. Internet outages have also posed obstacles, requiring some customers to speed through data allowances.

Thanks in part to astronomically low tides, Baker said the coastal flooding from Tuesday's storm has been "nothing like what we saw in the previous nor'easters" that washed out entire neighborhoods on the South Shore.

Administration officials will participate in a 3 p.m. conference call with emergency management officials and municipal leaders to discuss the latest forecast and conditions across the state, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito said.

Baker said utility crews are stationed around regions expected to be among the hardest hit so they can respond quickly once the storm passes and begin the work of restoring power.

"As soon as the snow stops and the wind stops blowing we'll be pushing the utilities to give people a sense about when the power will be back on," Baker said. "Over the course of the past 10 days the utilities have restored 750,000 homes and businesses that were without power ... and my guess is they will move quickly and aggressively to deal with this once the snow stops."

Traffic on state roads was light Tuesday morning, a sign that employers had heeded Baker's Monday call to allow employees to work from home rather than asking them to brave the elements to get to their workplaces. Ridership on the MBTA system -- which was operating reduced service Tuesday -- was also light, the governor said.

Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack said the T ran service roughly equal to what it operates on weekends, in part so the T could hold some trains out of service to keep them from being damaged in the snow and therefore unavailable for the morning commute Wednesday when many more workers are expected to head into Boston.

"The goal has been to provide a more limited service, but one that is sufficient to get people to where they need to be while preserving some of our equipment, which is aging, so we can run a normal rush hour tomorrow," Pollack said. "Run less service, but run the service that we run well. That's what happened this morning and we hope the same with happen this afternoon as well."

The governor asked people to stay off the roads Tuesday so crews can plow and treat roadways to make the Wednesday commute as smooth as possible.

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